The Travel Chronicle

GUIMARÃES · PORTUGAL · THE 12-MONTH VERDICT Portugal’s north is green because it rains, and Guimarães takes its share: 6.53 inches in November against 0.65 in July at the reference station. The temperature range is far gentler. Average highs run from 57.2°F in January to 76.6°F in August, a spread of 19.4 degrees across the … Read more

WEKIWA SPRINGS · FLORIDA · THE 12-MONTH VERDICT Wekiwa Springs sells one thing twelve months a year: clear, constant water in a bowl of oaks and palmettos north of Orlando. The water holds its temperature all year. The air over it does nothing of the kind. July averages an afternoon high of 92.0°F and January … Read more

WEEKI WACHEE SPRINGS · BEST TIME TO VISIT · FLORIDA The water has no season at Weeki Wachee Springs, so the month you pick never changes the swim. It changes everything around it: the air you dry off in, the odds of an afternoon storm, the hour the light goes. Twenty-seven miles inland at the … Read more

DOURO VALLEY · BEST TIME TO VISIT · NORMALS FROM 561 M The Douro was rebuilt by hand. Schist terraces stack up both banks in a geometry that took three centuries of wall-building, the river bends below them in slow green loops, and the quintas that make port sit at the top of every ramp. … Read more

CASCAIS · THE 12-MONTH VERDICT · 38.7° N An average August day in Cascais tops out at 84.2°F and the whole month records measurable rain on a single day. An average November brings 4.51 inches of it, spread across 9.3 days. Between those two lines sits the month most travelers should be booking, plus a … Read more

CARVOEIRO · THE ALGARVE · BEST TIME TO VISIT Carvoeiro puts its whole town on one cove: white houses that stop where the sand starts, stairs cut into the sandstone, a boardwalk east toward the blowholes at Algar Seco, and boats leaving the beach for the caves along the coast toward Benagil. Most of what … Read more